


you give me a reason I can't ignore

by vibranium



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, i mean they're assassins, mentions of torture, mild violence, the mission violence is pretty canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibranium/pseuds/vibranium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A month-long solo mission in Tanzania, just north of the country of South Africa, turns into a two-week-long solo mission that goes sour very, very quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you give me a reason I can't ignore

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for mild violence. Title from Sixx: AM's 'Live Forever.'

A month-long solo mission in Tanzania, just north of the country of South Africa, turns into a two-week-long solo mission that goes sour very, very quickly.

 

After two weeks, Agent Clinton Barton is captured and off the grid.

 

Of course, the second that Nick Fury is notified of this, he has no choice but to notify Agent Barton’s partner. And naturally, he knows that he should be readying a Quinjet and a crew of agents for Natasha, because he really doesn’t expect her to be passive when it comes to the marksman.

 

“Ready me a file with every little bit of information we’ve got on this,” he says to Agent Hill, who’s walking steadily at his side. She gives a curt nod and veers off into her own office when she gets there.

 

He’s right, as usual, because the Russian woman tenses at the mention of her partner, _her_ archer, two weeks too early. A mission like this, she thinks, does not get finished two weeks before the estimated date of extraction.

 

There is no briefing, simply because there are no _details_ to be briefed on, except the ones that Natasha already knows. She looks through the file regardless, to reassure herself on the fact that she knows every little damn detail about Clint’s mission. She doesn’t ask any questions.

 

Twenty minutes much too late, Agent Romanov is on a Quinjet with three other agents, all of which she does not know or trust. She does not trust anyone, especially not now, especially not when her Hawk is potentially down. “I need a copilot,” she says, voice measured, calculated, toneless and all business. “Someone who actually knows how to fly this thing. I need two of you on the communications and GPS devices. I want to be in South Africa as soon as possible.”

 

She will not even entertain the ideas of _what if I can’t save him? What if there’s nothing to_ save _?_ as she copilots the Quinjet. Instead, she thinks of bringing home the man that renewed her life, in more ways than just one.

 

Approximately five hours later, Natasha and her team are touching down in the South African S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters. Blazing heat meets them the second they step off the Quinjet. Inside, they get their guns, their bullets, their extra protection. They are loaded into a S.H.I.E.L.D issue Hummer shortly after and are driven quickly into Tanzania in search of the beloved master marksman. The drive is only about half an hour, especially quick at such high, nearly frantic speeds, and the team of agents is dropped off on the outskirts of the sparsely populated town where Clint had been stationed, trooping in like trained soldiers during a war. Mentally, this _is_ a war for Natasha. And she’s damn well going to win.

 

Within fifteen minutes, the four agents are busting into the building Agent Barton had been keeping an eye on. If anything, this is where he had been taken, spotted and captured by the enemy.

 

It’s the right place. Almost immediately, they team is being shot at, though no wounds are sustained – on their side, at least. It is simple, because these men and women on the opposing side clearly have no training with the weapons they yield. While a few struggle to reload, they are taken down. Some weapons are picked up and pocketed by the S.H.I.E.L.D team, but then they are on the move once more.

 

He is located surprisingly quickly, as the guards throughout the building go down with little to no fight at all. The sight, though, is not expected. Natasha goes in alone, growling orders at the three other agents to guard the room. “I want two of you with your guns pointed right between those men’s eyes. Don’t waver; we don’t know if they’re armed. One of you, guard the door when I’m in there.”

 

Clint is groggy, barely awake, eyes half-open and bruised faintly. Even from a distance, though the window in the door, Natasha can notice the needles sitting on the table a little ways away from her partner, and she knows they are not vaccines, not medication. The men in the room are clearly not doctors, either.

 

For a fleeting second, Natasha feels something not too terribly recognizable. She has only felt it once before, when Clint was gunned down and bleeding out in her lap while she shot down their continuously oncoming opponents.

 

Fear.

 

It wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world for Natasha to admit, but given her and Clint’s situation, it was a split-second thing to tell herself and to accept. She could reevaluate just how thin her mental wall was when she had time – and an alive and well Hawk in her arms.

 

The room, she finds, has a keypad that requires a certain code to get in. With the butt of her gun, she smashes the device and hears the mechanical _click_ of the door unlocking. With that, she’s pushing her way into the room, one gun per hand. There are three men in the room, and she’s got one gun trained between the eyes of the man reaching for the syringes and the other pointed at the sternum of the man securing Clint to the chair. The third man is sitting at the computer in the far corner of the room.

 

Their eyes go wide, all three pairs, and they’re patting themselves, looking for their own self defense, their own weapons. All but one come up short, the man at the computer, and he shoots at Natasha, the bullet grazing her side and ripping through her gear. He had been aiming for her abdomen and clearly missed, trembling so terribly.

 

She decides to shoot him first.

 

Natasha gets him in the sternum, shattering the bones there and hearing the satisfying crunching noises under the sound of his grunt and pained cry. The man nearest the syringes is trying as quickly as he can to do what he must, so he goes next, shot twice: once in the abdomen, then through his temple, as he’s turning toward the surgical table.

 

The third man, the one that had the job of securing Barton to the chair, is dropping to his knees and begging for his life in horrible, broken English. Natasha, in practiced and perfect Swahili, tells the man that she has no pity for men who try to hurt what matters most to her.

 

She knows Clint cannot speak Swahili. She is safe from his taunting whenever he regains his energy and health.

 

She shoots and, despite her words to the man, delivers the bullet between his eyes to make it a less of a slow death, compared to the men lying on the floor with him.

 

With the three men taken care of, and no one else on the way, Natasha holsters her weapons and moves quickly over to Clint. She glances down at the syringes to tell what they are, though she can figure without having to look, then she’s at his side, undoing the binds at his ankles, then his wrists.

 

“Natasha, what’re you doin’ here? M’doin’ jus’ _fiiiine_ , Tasha,” he mumbles, groggy and incoherent, and really all that Natasha can make out is her name coming from his mouth. It’s the sweetest sound she has heard in two weeks, but it makes her heart shatter, because she can tell just how much he has been tortured and ruined.

 

She knows he will not be her same Hawk when he’s completely awake and well again.

 

◄►

 

Clint falls unconscious, deadweight in Natasha’s arms, as she alternately carries and drags him back to the Hummer, then onto the Quinjet. She’s understanding and confused at the same time, because she knows he must not have had much sleep in the past few days but wonders why he is _so_ asleep; she knows he usually waits for something to lay on to knock out, to save Natasha some of the burden of having to carry him (though he knows full well that she can do it without much trouble at all).

 

They are back in New York approximately seven hours later, and he is rushed into the Med bay immediately. She follows after him, as her mind barely registers the nurses and the doctors and even _Bruce_ hovering over her archer, and the only reason she is allowed into the room, albeit made to stand at the sidelines, is because Dr. Banner notices her and her own shocked, dazed state. He mumbles to some of the nurses to make a note to remind him to check on the redheaded spy later on, once everything with Clint was squared away.

 

And about an hour later, Clint’s bandaged up, there’s an IV stuck in his arm, and he’s got air tubes under his nose. He is hooked up, under all that bright white gauze, to a heart monitor, and as every one of the nurses and doctors file out of the room, Natasha just _stares_. Because under the strong, glaring hospital-like lights, she can see now just the damage that those bastards in Tanzania did to break her partner.

 

He is covered in lacerations and abrasions, and the worst of them, she knows, are covered in layers upon layers of pristine gauze. It is stark white against his dirtied, bloodied skin. He looks to her as if he has just endured months and months of war. It makes her feel sick that she was not there to be at his back through it all, that he had to wait until the last seconds of his goddamn life to have her come to his aid.

 

◄►

 

It is not much later when Bruce quietly reenters the room. Natasha has already dragged the one chair in the room over to Clint’s bedside, and all she is doing when the doctor walks in is staring at her partner’s unmoving body. The only thing that reassures her is the constant beeping of his heart monitor.

 

Bruce is gentle and kind as ever as he speaks to her in hushed tones. He begins with a few, simple questions about the mission (“How are you doing?” “What was it like out there? “Can you describe what was going on when you went in to get Clint?”), sometimes idly jotting something down the she writes. Otherwise, he maintains eye contact with the redhead sitting in front of him, nodding and listening as she speaks in a stressed, taut voice.

 

Once Bruce notices that she’s calmer and has said all she could have possibly told him, he tells her that Clint is in a coma. “The condition,” he says to her, “is indefinite. He could be like this for a few days, or a few weeks. But I’m going to be checking in constantly.”

 

 _Indefinite_ is the only word that she can hear, bouncing around in her head like something palpable. Volatile.

 

She cannot look at Bruce after that, turns her head and looks up at her partner’s serene but marked-up face, looking older and more worn-down than when he’d left for Africa just two weeks prior. All she gives the doctor in response is a slow nod, and she can barely hear the man leave the room.

 

◄►

 

In the days that follow, Natasha does not move, not even when the nurses urge her to so they can get around to Clint from the side that she is sitting on. They learn quickly that the spy is not going to move, not for anyone. Not unless it’s Clint waking up and asking her to.

 

She does not even move to eat, really. Her movements are mechanical at best and Bruce brings her food throughout the day, as she absolutely refuses to leave the room. Her excuse every time she is asked to at least move around or go downstairs to get coffee for herself is, “What if Clint wakes up and I’m not there?” Understanding from whoever is asking her to get herself moving is immediate.

 

All Natasha can ever think to herself as she clutches at Clint’s motionless, dirty hand, earth caked beneath his short, dull nails, is, _I cannot patch his wounds, wash the blood, the absolute_ hell _of the mission from his skin. I cannot soothe, comfort, fuss over my archer, my lover, my protector, and I his. I cannot help but sit beside the unconscious, battered body of the man that let me start my life over, and wait for him to wake up._

 

It kills her. She is not known for her patience when it comes to the wellbeing of her Hawk.

 

◄►

 

Nine days later, nine days filled with no changes except for the slow healing of Clint’s bruises and cuts, as Natasha begins to doze, the marksman’s hand stirs against hers. When she looks up, startled to full wakefulness, his eyes are still shut and his heart rate has barely changed at all.

 

Four days after that, nearly two weeks since Clint was brought back to New York, his eyelids flutter as Natasha stares at him and thinks to herself about what could possibly be going on in his head. The movement gets her attention immediately, and as his eyes begin to crack open further and further, his heart rate increases to that of someone completely awake.

 

He has barely stirred when his fingers squeeze her own. In turn, she feels her heart squeezing and her chest tightening. She mumbles his name, almost like a realization. _He is finally,_ finally _awake._

She hears her own name coming from Clint’s mouth, his voice groggy and rough from disuse. It is the best thing she has ever heard, she thinks to herself, in her entire life. In her mind, hearing him finally say her name is like him telling her that he lo – No. She cannot think of that; not now.

 

She feels absolutely euphoric, because he’s turning his head to look over at her, and he’s got this kind of lazy smile on his face, that one that she had grown so used to waking up and seeing every single goddamn morning.

 

Clint speaks to her quietly, even more so than before, saying, “God, darlin’, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” squeezes her hand again, and as her eyes flicker over his face, they catch on his and are glued there.

 

At the edges of his irises, that ghastly, tesseract blue begins to taint the grey-green of Clint Barton’s eyes.


End file.
